maravsMéryConfusable pair

Quick tell: mara is a noun, Méry is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mara” is a noun and “Méry” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,326
“mara” frequency rank
#48,675
“Méry” frequency rank
71001
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mara Méry
Definition Rongeur de grande taille du genre Dolichotis vivant en Argentine dans la pampa, les steppes herbacées et les déserts broussailleux. Commune française, située dans le département de la Savoie.

Letter map: mara vs Méry

Shared letters muted; letters that set mara and Méry apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. mara and Méry follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
mara
4 ch
Méry

Part-of-speech tell for mara / Méry

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mara is anoun and Méryaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71001, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mara is recorded at frequency rank #22,326, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.ʁa\. Méry is at rank #48,675, tagged as aname.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 71001, this pair ranks #49,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mara vs Méry

Shared letters: mr. Private to "mara": a. Private to "Méry": yé.

"mara" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Méry" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mara ← amra · maar · marra · mmara · mraa

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mara" for "Méry" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mara" is a noun and "Méry" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mara" vs "Méry" - which ranks higher?
"mara" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,326 in our French list, against #48,675 for "Méry". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "mara" vs "Méry" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mara" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Méry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #49,174 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mara" and "Méry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "memo vs Méry". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #49,174 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list